This is very important and urgent issue, please take some time out and read the
links in the order listed.

Please try and subscribe to the list at link # 5 and let your views known where
it counts i.e. IETF. May I add here if passed in current form it is going to hurt developing Countries like Pakistan most.

Please share this message and do us a favour by posting it to the other lists / forums you subscribe.

The good news is that the apache group and Debian have already rejected the Microsoft patent encumbered portions of the standard. Therefore, I really think that unless something is done to relax the licensing of this proposal, it's doomed to fail. I can't wait to hear what the Sendmail and Postfix people have to say about this.

With permission of Mr Chuck Mead I am posting brief excrept here as some of you may be wondering what is MARID.

On Friday the 3rd of September 2004 I reported that Sender-ID, the proposed name for a new anti-forgery standard for email being developed by the IETF's MARID working group, was in turmoil because of the license being imposed by one of the MARID group's corporate members, Microsoft. Many of the most well known open source organizations and developers have begun reporting their stance on the issue so it seems appropriate to discuss what's actually happening and why.

First of all it is important to note that Microsoft has not yet been granted a patent on any intellectual property associated with the proposed standard (Sender-ID). They have informed the working group (MARID) of a patent claim they have applied for with the USPTO and they have informed the working group of that claim as required by the IETF's IPR policy (RFC3669).

These events are well within the norm for the IETF. In fact it's clear that these events should have happened exactly as they have. The problems arise because of the nature and impact of the standard MARID is charged with producing.

As we all know electronic mail and the global problems with it's Unsolicited Commercial variant have become a huge issue for today's internet. My own statistics tell me that as much as 88% of email inbound to my own servers are either UCE or laden with worm or virus payloads. The economic cost we all share because of this huge transit load is virtually incalculable. Referring to the first paragraph of the MARID Charter we find the following: